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‘The South’ for the purposes of the UNFCCC, has come to mean a diverse assemblage of 150 states. It is home to the overwhelming majority of the world's poor, and is the locus of the world's most profound development challenges. Even while the South witnesses an acceleration of economic growth in some regions, its average individual income is still only one-sixth that of the average Annex I citizen. It is against those backdrops that the South, in spite of its diversity, has hung together as a coherent force within the UNFCCC. The South does not advance a single coherent and consistently...

‘The South’ for the purposes of the UNFCCC, has come to mean a diverse assemblage of 150 states. It is home to the overwhelming majority of the world's poor, and is the locus of the world's most profound development challenges. Even while the South witnesses an acceleration of economic growth in some regions, its average individual income is still only one-sixth that of the average Annex I citizen. It is against those backdrops that the South, in spite of its diversity, has hung together as a coherent force within the UNFCCC. The South does not advance a single coherent and consistently articulated discourse. Nevertheless, as this article explains, certain arguments and persistent themes do resonate deeply within the many Southern discourses, and thus arise in various forms in the rhetoric and strategies of the South. The objective of this article is to outline those fundamental commonalities of the Southern discourses.